1
OCR
A LEVEL
PSYCHOLOGY
FOR A LEVEL YEAR 1
Includes AS Level
Louise Ellerby-Jones
Sandra Latham
Nigel Wooldridge
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Contents
Acknowledgements
Introduction
Part 1 Research Methods
Part 2 Psychological Themes through Core Studies
Section 1 Core Studies
Chapter 1 Social Psychology
Responses to people in authority
Responses to people in need A
Chapter 2 Cognitive Psychology
Memory
Attention A
Chapter 3 Developmental Psychology
External influences on children’s behaviour
Moral development A
Chapter 4 Biological Psychology
Regions of the brain
Brain plasticity A
Chapter 5 Psychology of Individual Differences
Understanding disorders
Measuring differences A
Chapter 6 Applying the Core Studies
Section 2 Areas, Perspectives and Debates in Psychology
Chapter 7 Social Psychology
Chapter 8 Cognitive Psychology
Chapter 9 Developmental Psychology
Chapter 10 Biological Psychology
Chapter 11 Psychology of Individual Differences
Glossary
Further reading
Index
3
Chapter 1
Social Psychology
Part 2: Section 1 Core Studies
The social area: introduction
4
In 1985, Gordon W. Allport put forward the classic
definition of social psychology as ‘an attempt to
understand and explain how the thoughts, feelings
and behaviour of individuals are influenced by the
actual, imagined or implied presence of others.’ This
idea – that, to understand human behaviour, we need
to understand the social context in which it occurs
– lies at the heart of the social area of Psychology
and it helps to set the parameters for the research
concerns of social psychologists.
However, the broad nature of Allport’s definition
masks the way in which social psychologists work,
as what they do is focus on one particular social
process at a time and then try to achieve an in-depth
understanding of it. The particular social processes
they examine are often triggered by recent real-world
events (such as the studies we will be looking at by
Milgram on obedience and Piliavin et al. on helping
behaviour) but, equally, can be of relatively ‘timeless’
concern (such as trying to understand the relationship
between attitudes and behaviour, or the reasons why
we find some people more attractive than others).
In terms of how social psychologists conduct their
research, a wide range of methods are used. That said,
field experiments – in which an independent variable
is manipulated to see its effect on behaviour in a
real-life setting – have been used more often in social
psychology than perhaps in other areas of the subject.
We will see examples of this in the studies by Piliavin
et al. and also by Levine et al. Other commonly
used methods include surveys, as a means by which
to find out people’s attitudes towards something,
and – because social psychologists are as systematic
and scientific in how they approach their research as
psychologists working in other areas of the subject –
laboratory experiments.
Strengths of the social area
Weaknesses of the social
area
●
●
Research within the social
area can help improve our
understanding of human
behaviour, particularly
the extent to which this is
affected by other people
● Research within the social
area can be extremely
useful, having practical
applications in a range of
different settings
● Research within the
social area often helps to
bring Psychology to wider
audiences, given the way
in which research often
seeks to explain realworld events
● Research within the
social area is often high
in ecological validity,
particularly if it makes
use of field experiments
Findings from research
within the social area may
not be true for all time
(as social situations can
change over time)
● Findings from research
within the social area may
not be true for all places
(as social situations can
change from one culture
to another)
● Given the socially
sensitive nature of much
research within the social
area, it can be difficult
to stay within the ethical
guidelines
● The boundaries can
become blurred between
the social area and,
say, the cognitive area
(particularly when looking
at social cognition)
The particular social studies we will be examining are
as follows:
Key Theme
Classic study
Contemporary study
Responses
to people in
authority
Milgram (1963)
Obedience
Bocchiaro et al. (2012)
Disobedience and
whistle-blowing
Responses to
people in need
Piliavin et al.
(1969)
Subway
Samaritan
Levine et al. (2001)
Cross-cultural altruism
BOCCHIARO,reading
P., ZIMBARDO, P. & VAN LANGE (2012)
Further
To
defy or not
to defy:
an experimental
of the
MILGRAM,
S. (1963)
Behavioural
study ofstudy
obedience.
dynamics
of disobedience
and whistle-blowing.
Social
Journal of Abnormal
and Social
Psychology, Vol. 67,
No.
Influence,
Vol.
7,
No.
1,
35-50
4, 371-378
The relationships we have with other people can
be characterised as being either horizontal (e.g. the
relationship of equals that we have with our friends)
or vertical (e.g. the relationships we have with our
teachers or our employers in which they may give us
commands about how to behave). Within a vertical
relationship, the person who issues commands is in a
position of authority, while the person who receives
their commands can be described as subordinate to
them.
Some positions of authority may be deliberately
sought out (e.g. if someone actively seeks to be
appointed as a manager at work, or to be elected as a
politician), whereas others may just emerge (e.g. if you
become a parent, you are an authority figure in the
eyes of your child whether you like it or not). People
will often find themselves in positions of authority in
some areas of their lives (e.g. as a parent, or as the
coach of their child’s football team) while in other
areas of their lives they will be in more subordinate
positions, having to respond to those in positions of
authority over them (e.g. their boss at work).
When, as subordinates, we agree with the commands
issued by people in positions of authority, there are
few problems. However, what if we disagree with
something that a person in a position of authority
instructs us to do? This is when problems can arise.
There are many ways in which we can respond to the
requests made by people in positions of authority –
in particular, we can do what they ask of us (known
as compliance, or obedience), or we can refuse to
follow the instructions we have been given (i.e. be
disobedient). Of course, there is much more to it
than this (e.g. on the outside we could be obedient
but inside we could be simmering with resentment;
we could be obedient to the major request that has
been made of us, but then try to compensate for this
by disobeying more minor requests) but, in terms of
how we behave in response to a specific request made
of us by a person in a position of authority, it may
well come down to having to be either obedient or
disobedient.
To what extent are people obedient? What would it
take for someone to be disobedient? Are some people
more likely to be disobedient than others? If so, what
are the characteristics of those people who are most
likely to disobey the orders placed on them? These
are all interesting questions worthy of investigation,
but what it is crucial to note is that they are of much
more than mere academic interest.
In 1933, the Nazis set up their first concentration
camp at Dachau, outside Munich in southern
Germany. Many more followed as the Nazis
imprisoned people viewed as socially or politically
undesirable and used them as slave labour. Later on,
death camps were set up with the specific aim of
systematically killing those groups of people Adolf
Hitler did not approve of. It was at these death camps,
built mainly on occupied land in Poland, that ‘the final
solution’ to what Hitler saw as ‘the Jewish problem’
was to be enacted. However, for this to happen, Hitler
needed the people working in the death camps to
obey orders to kill people en masse. It is to try and
understand how this and other atrocities could have
happened that it is so important for psychologists to
investigate how people respond to those in positions
of authority.
Chapter 1 Social Psychology
Responses to people in authority
Milgram (1963)
From 1933-45, millions of innocent people were
systematically slaughtered on command in Nazi
Germany. For Milgram, it is a social fact that the
individual who is commanded by a legitimate
Figure 1 Milgram’s advertisement, taken from Obedience
to Authority
5
authority ordinarily obeys. He sought to devise a
technique for studying obedience in which participants
would be ordered to administer to a victim what they
believed to be electric shocks; this was done in the
context of a ‘learning experiment’ apparently set up to
study the effects of punishment on memory. Milgram
was interested in discovering the point at which
participants would refuse to go on. He also envisaged
a series of follow-up experiments in which aspects
of the procedure (e.g. the gender of participants; the
location in which the experiment was conducted)
would be systematically varied to discover those
factors that alter the degree of obedience to the
experimental commands.
Participants
Part 2: Section 1 Core Studies
The participants were 40 males between the ages
of 20 and 50, drawn from New Haven and the
surrounding communities. They were obtained through
a newspaper advertisement and direct mailing. They
believed that they were taking part in a study of
memory and learning.
The distribution of age and occupational types in
the experiment was as follows:
6
Occupations
Number
aged
20-29
years
Number
aged
30-39
years
Number Percentage
aged
of total
(occupations)
40-50
years
Workers,
skilled and
unskilled
4
5
6
37.5
Sales,
business and
white collar
3
6
7
40.0
Professional
1
5
3
22.5
Percentage
of total (age)
20
40
40
Participants were paid $4.50 for their participation in
the experiment. They were told that the payment was
made simply for coming to the laboratory and was
theirs to keep no matter what happened after they
arrived.
Personnel and locale
The experiment was conducted on the grounds of
Yale University. The role of experimenter was played
by a 31-year-old high school teacher of Biology; he
wore a grey lab-coat and remained somewhat stern
throughout the experiment. The victim was played by
a 47-year-old accountant whom most observers found
mild-mannered and likable.
Procedure
Each run of the experiment involved one naive
participant and the victim. The experimenter explained
to them that the purpose of the experiment was to
find out about the effect of punishment on learning.
The naive participant and the victim then drew slips
of paper from a hat to determine who would be the
learner in the experiment. The draw was rigged so
that the naive participant was always the teacher.
The teacher and learner were then taken to an
adjacent room and the learner was strapped into
an “electric chair” apparatus. An electrode (which
participants were told was connected to an electric
shock generator in the adjoining room) was attached
to the learner’s wrist, and electrode paste was applied
“to avoid blisters and burns.” In response to a question
by the learner, the experimenter declared: “Although
the shocks can be extremely painful, they cause no
permanent tissue damage.”
Learning task. The lesson administered by the
teacher comprised of a word-pair task in which the
teacher read a series of word pairs to the learner and
then read the first word of the pair along with four
terms. The learner was to indicate which of the four
terms had originally been paired with the first word.
He communicated his answer by pressing one of four
switches in front of him, which in turn lit up one of
four numbered quadrants in an answer-box located on
top of the electric shock generator.
Shock generator. The electric shock generator was
constructed with care to look as authentic as possible.
The instrument panel consisted of 30 switches set
Stop and ask yourself...
●Why
do you suppose Milgram advertised for the particular sorts of
people that he did (i.e. men from New Haven aged 20-50 in a specific
range of jobs)?
●Why do you suppose he settled on a sample of 40 participants (rather
than have more than this, or less than this)?
●What was Milgram’s sampling method? Why do you suppose Milgram
chose to obtain his sample in the way that he did (i.e. through a process
of would-be participants responding to an advertisement)?
Links to methodological issues
● Sample
●
Sampling method
T
L
Figure 2 Milgram’s experiment
in a horizontal line. Each switch was clearly labelled
with a voltage designation ranging from 15 volts up
to 450 volts. There was a 15-volt increment from one
switch to the next going from left to right. Verbal
designations were also assigned to each group of
four switches as follows (going from left to right):
Slight Shock, Moderate Shock, Strong Shock, Very
Strong Shock, Intense Shock, Extreme Intensity Shock,
Danger: Severe Shock. (Two switches after this last
designation were simply marked XXX).
Sample shock. Before beginning his run as a
teacher, each naive participant would be given a
sample shock. This was always administered to the
wrist of the teacher and it was always 45 volts,
applied by pressing the third switch of the generator.
The aim of this part of the procedure was to convince
the participant of the authenticity of the generator.
The electric shock came from a 45-volt battery wired
into the generator.
Shock instructions. The teacher was instructed to
administer a shock to the learner each time he gave a
wrong response. Crucially, he was told to ‘move one
level higher on the shock generator each time the
Chapter 1 Social Psychology
E
learner flashes a wrong answer’, and to announce the
voltage level before administering the shock. (This was
to remind the teacher of the increasing intensity of
the shocks he was giving).
Feedback from the victim. The learner gave a
predetermined set of responses to the word-pair
test, based on a schedule of three wrong answers to
one correct answer. When the 300-volt shock was
administered, the learner kicked on the wall. After
that, he gave no answer to the next word-pair. At
this point, the experimenter instructed the teacher to
wait 5-10 seconds before treating the absence of a
response as a wrong answer. After the 315-volt shock
was administered, the victim kicked on the wall again.
After that, there was no further feedback from the
victim – neither answers to the word-pair exercises
nor any further kicking on the wall.
Experimenter feedback. If the participant
indicated his unwillingness to go on, the experimenter
responded with a series of standardised “prods”, made
in the following sequence:
Prod 1. ‘Please continue’, or ‘Please go on.’
Prod 2: ‘The experiment requires that you continue.’
Prod 3: ‘It is absolutely essential that you continue.’
Prod 4: ‘You have no other choice, you must go on.’
If the participant asked if the learner was liable to
suffer permanent physical injury, the experimenter
said: ‘Although the shocks may be painful, there is
no permanent tissue damage, so please go on.’ If the
participant said that the learner did not want to go
on, the experimenter replied: ‘Whether the learner
likes it or not, you must go on until he has learned
all the word pairs correctly. So please go on.’ (Both of
these special prods were then followed by prods 2, 3
and 4, if necessary).
Dependent measures. A participant who broke off
at any point prior to administering the thirtieth shock
level (i.e. 450 volts) was deemed to be a ‘defiant’
participant. An ‘obedient’ participant was one who
complied with experimental commands fully and
proceeded to administer all shock levels commanded.
Interview and dehoax. Following the experiment,
participants were interviewed. After this, a friendly
reconciliation was arranged between the participant
and the victim and an effort was made to reduce any
tensions that arose as a result of the experiment to
try and ensure that the participant would leave the
laboratory in a state of well-being.
7
Stop and ask yourself...
●In
what ways was Milgram’s procedure different from the experience of
working in a Nazi death camp?
Predicted results
Fourteen final-year Psychology students at Yale
University were provided with a detailed description
of the experimental situation and asked to predict
how they would expect ‘100 Americans of diverse
occupations, and ranging in age from 20 to 50 years’ to
behave. All predicted that only an insignificant minority
would go through to the end of the shock series (The
estimates ranged from 0-3%, with a mean estimate of
1.2%). Milgram also posed this question to colleagues
and the general feeling was that few, if any, participants
would go beyond the Very Strong Shock designation.
Distribution of break-off points:
Verbal designation and
voltage indication
Milgram’s procedure to ten people and
ask them what percentage of people they think
would go all the way to the end of the shock
series and give 450-volt electric shocks to another
person.
●Ask them what they themselves would do if they
found themselves taking part in this experiment.
Actual results
The obtained distribution of scores deviated radically
from the predictions, with no participants breaking off
before the 300-volt shock level, and 26 obeying the
orders of the experimenter to continue giving shocks
up to the 450-volt maximum:
Number of subjects for
whom this was maximum
shock
Slight shock
15
30
45
60
0
0
0
0
Moderate shock
75
90
105
120
Have a go yourself
●Describe
Links to methodological issues
● Ecological validity
0
0
0
0
Strong shock
135
150
165
180
0
0
0
0
Very strong shock
195
210
225
240
0
0
0
0
Intense shock
255
270
285
300
0
0
0
5
Extreme intensity shock
315
330
345
360
4
2
1
1
Part 2: Section 1 Core Studies
Danger: severe shock
8
375
390
405
420
1
0
0
0
XXX
435
450
0
26
‘I think he’s trying to communicate, he’s knocking.
...Well it’s not fair to shock the guy... these are terrific
volts. I don’t think this is very humane. ...Oh, I can’t
go on with this; no, this isn’t right. It’s a hell of an
experiment. The guy is suffering in there. No, I don’t
want to go on. This is crazy. [Subject refused to
administer more shocks.]’
Figure 2 Comments from Milgram’s experiment, from Obedience
to Authority
Stop and ask yourself...
●How
could Milgram’s study be criticised in relation to the ethical
guidelines? How could Milgram’s study be defended in relation to the
ethical guidelines?
●Other than in terms of obedience to authority, what other reasons
might have caused 65% of Milgram’s participants to administer the
highest level of electric shock?
●What was the quantitative data that Milgram collected? What was
the qualitative data that Milgram collected? How/why does Milgram’s
study benefit from the collection of both types of data?
Links to methodological issues
Ethics
●
●
Validity
●
Qualitative/quantitative data
Chapter 1 Social Psychology
During the experiment, participants typically
showed signs of extreme tension. Participants were
observed to sweat, tremble, stutter, bite their lips,
groan, and dig their fingernails into their flesh.
Fourteen of the participants showed signs of nervous
laughter and smiling, while three experienced fullblown, uncontrollable seizures.
Comments made by defiant participants at the
point at which they broke off suggested high levels of
agitation and even anger:
Discussion
The experiment produced two findings of surprise
to Milgram: the first concerned the sheer strength
of obedient tendencies shown in this situation; the
second was the extraordinary tension generated by
the procedures.
Milgram suggests nine features of the experiment
that may explain the high levels of obedience
observed in this situation:
1.The experiment was sponsored by, and took place
on the grounds of, Yale University, which is an
institution of unimpeachable reputation.
2.The experiment was, on the face of it, designed to
attain a worthy purpose – namely, advancement
of knowledge about learning and memory.
3.The participant believed the victim to have
voluntarily submitted himself to the authority
system of the experimenter.
4.The participant had also volunteered to take part
in the experiment, and he felt under an obligation
to help the experimenter.
5.Being paid to come to the laboratory
strengthened the participant’s sense of obligation
to the experimenter.
6.From the point of view of the participant, it was
purely by chance that he was the teacher and
the other man was the learner; they both ran the
same risk of being assigned the role of learner and
so the learner couldn’t complain about this.
7.There was a lack of clarity about what a
psychologist could expect of a participant and
when he could be over-stepping acceptable limits.
8.The participants had been assured that the
shocks administered to the learner were ‘painful
but not dangerous’.
9.As long as the learner continued to provide
answers on the signal box (which he did up to the
300-volt level), it could be construed that he was
willing to ‘play the game’.
Milgram suggests four features of the experiment
that may explain the tension experienced by the
participants:
1.The participant was placed in a position in which
he had to respond to competing demands from
two people – the experimenter and the victim –
whose demands couldn’t both be met.
2.The demands of the experimenter (for abstract
scientific knowledge) and the victim (for relief
from physical suffering) were very different.
3.The experiment gave the participant little time
for reflection.
4.The experiment involved participants
experiencing conflict between the disposition not
to harm other people and the tendency to obey
those perceived to be legitimate authorities.
9
Stop and ask yourself...
●What
do the results from this study suggest about whether behaviour
is best explained in terms of people’s personalities or the situation they
are in?
●What do the results from this study suggest about the extent to which
we have control over our behaviour?
● Is this study useful? If so, to whom, and how?
Stop and ask yourself...
●What
does Milgram’s study tell us in relation to the key theme of
‘responses to people in authority’?
Links to debates
●Individual/situational
explanations
●
Free will/determinism
●
Usefulness
Links to the Key Theme:
Responses to people in authority
●
Evaluation of the study by Milgram
Links to methodological issues
Research method
Data
ilgram’s study can in many ways be described
M
as an experiment as it had a dependent variable
(participants were counted as either obedient or
disobedient, with them being separated into these
two groups in accordance with whether they
administered electric shocks all the way up to the
450 volt maximum, or not) and controls (e.g. the
same shock generator machine was used each time;
the same people played the roles of ‘experimenter’
and ‘learner’; the feedback that the ‘teacher’ got
from the ‘learner’ during the course of the study
was the same each time; etc.)
■ However, it is worth noting that, in itself, his
original study did not have an independent variable.
He would carry out a series of variations on his
original study (e.g. doing it in an office in downtown
Bridgeport, rather than at Yale University; doing
it with a sample of women, instead of men) and,
arguably, his original study became in effect a
baseline ‘control condition’ that he was then able
to compare the other versions of his study against
(with the alteration he made each time acting as
an independent variable in relation to the original
study), but it remains the case that there was no
independent variable within the first study itself.
■ Does this mean that it can’t be described as an
experiment? Decide where you stand in relation to
this question.
■
Part 2: Section 1 Core Studiesw
■
10
he main quantitative data generated by Milgram’s
T
study comprised the percentages of participants
who were prepared to administer electric shocks to
the ‘learner’ up to 300 volts (100%) and all the way
up to 450 volts (65%).
■ The qualitative data consisted of his descriptions
of how those in the role of ‘teacher’ behaved as
they progressed up the electric shock generator
(e.g. sweating and trembling) and also the quotes of
what they said as they did this.
■ His study benefited hugely from the collection of
both types of data as, without the qualitative data,
we wouldn’t know anything about the feelings of
the participants as they administered the electric
shocks. What the qualitative data reveals is that
they may have done what they were told to do
by the ‘experimenter’, but they seemed to do
so without pleasure and in the context of great
emotional discomfort.
‘Republicans and Democrats were not significantly
different in obedience levels; Catholics were more
obedient than Jews or Protestants. The better educated
were more defiant than the less well-educated.
Those in the moral professions of law, medicine, and
teaching showed greater defiance than those in the
more technical professions, such as engineering and
physical science. The longer one’s military service, the
Validity
ilgram’s study was carried out before ethical
M
guidelines were put in place. However, this has not
stopped his study from being criticised in terms
of how his participants were treated. Participants
consented to take part but, as they were deceived
about the true purpose of the study (i.e. to
investigate obedience, rather than ‘memory and
learning’), it was not informed consent that they
gave. They could clearly withdraw from the study
– and 35% of them did – but everything they
heard from the ‘experimenter’ was discouraging
them from doing this. No names of individual
participants were reported in the original research
paper but, when Milgram refers (p. 375) to ‘a
46-year-old encyclopedia salesman’ being ‘seriously
embarrassed’ by the ‘violently convulsive’ seizure
that he experienced, it might have been possible for
him to be identified – after all, how many people
of this description would there be in the New
Haven area? Most importantly, there is a strong
case for arguing that participants were harmed
by their involvement in this study: with fourteen
showing ‘definite signs of nervous laughter’ (p. 375)
and three experiencing ‘full-blown, uncontrollable
seizures’ (p. 375), they were obviously experiencing
very high levels of stress.
■ In Milgram’s defence, it could clearly be argued
that, when he began his series of studies, he
couldn’t have known just how much anxiety his
participants would experience. Furthermore, his
participants were given a debrief (‘dehoax’) before
they left the laboratory. In his book Obedience to
Authority, Milgram writes that each participant was
also sent a 5-page report ‘specifically designed to
enhance the value of his experience’ (p. 197), that
those subjects felt to have suffered the most from
participation were examined one year later by an
impartial psychiatrist, and that (in response to a
questionnaire) nearly 84% of participants stated
that they were glad to have taken part in the
experiment.
■ You’ll need to decide for yourself whether Milgram
treated his participants in the way that he should
have done (would YOU have been happy taking
part in his study?), and also whether the value
of the study outweighs any harm caused to its
participants (i.e. whether ‘the end justifies the
means’).
■
■
n the face of it, Milgram’s study has high levels
O
of ‘face validity’ in that it would appear to be
measuring what he wants to measure – namely,
obedience. However, it is arguable that an
explanation in terms of obedience alone is too
simplistic and that the behaviour of his participants
could also reflect their levels of empathy (with the
‘learner’) or their levels of moral courage. It is not
obvious that obedience to authority is the only
reason why 65% of his participants were prepared
to give electric shocks up to the highest voltage
available.
■ In terms of ecological validity, it is obviously
not an everyday occurrence to be instructed to
give someone a series of electric shocks because
they give incorrect answers to questions, and in
that sense Milgram’s study clearly lacks ecological
validity. However, was the scenario that Milgram
created similar to that faced by people working
in the death camps in Nazi Germany? In many
respects, it wasn’t – for example, in the death
camps people were generally killed in large
numbers all at once through use of gas, rather
than individually using electricity, and Milgram’s
participants would not have feared that any
negative consequences would happen to them or
their loved ones if they were disobedient. (Most
importantly, of course, Milgram’s study was also
unlike Nazi Germany in that no one was actually
killed in the course of his experiment). That said,
there were some similarities between the two
situations, most notably the issuing of explicit
instructions to do something that would (the
people involved believed) cause suffering to another
(innocent) person, the issuing of a payment to
those carrying out these acts, the way in which the
person/people being harmed were invisible to the
person harming them, and the attempt to convince
those doing the harm that their actions were
serving some bigger, socially worthwhile purpose.
Chapter 1 Social Psychology
Ethics
Reliability
he whole procedure was highly replicable, as was
T
demonstrated by the fact that Milgram was able to
replicate it with 40 different participants. This was
made possible by the standardised procedure.
■ The way in which results were recorded (i.e. by
seeing the highest voltage switch the ‘teacher’
pressed down before refusing to go on) would have
■
11
led to anyone overseeing the procedure recording the
same outcome (result) for each participant.
■ In terms of whether Milgram’s sample was large
enough to suggest a consistent effect (and ‘iron
out’ any anomalies), it is arguable that it was large
enough to do this without being unmanageable in
terms of the cost and effort involved to collect data
from them.
Sample
It can be assumed that Milgram selected his
participants (men, aged 20–50, largely from working
class and lower middle class backgrounds) to reflect
the sorts of people who would have worked in the
death camps in Nazi Germany. He would have been
aiming to ‘compare like with like’, enabling him to
see whether obedience to even the most destructive
of orders was universal. However, as Milgram’s
participants were all from the same part of the same
country and didn’t, in the original study, include any
women, his findings about high levels of obedience
might only be true of the sorts of people in his
sample.
■ In his study, Milgram used a self-selected sampling
method as his participants determined their own
involvement in it by choosing to respond to his
advertisement. It can be assumed that he used this
particular sampling method as it was the best way
for him to reach people from within his particular
target population (of males aged 20–50 in everyday
jobs).
■
Links to debates
Individual and situational explanations debate –
The descriptions of how participants behaved whilst
administering electric shocks to the learner make it
clear that they were extremely uncomfortable with
what they were doing. The fact, therefore, that 65%
of participants were still prepared to administer
electric shocks all the way up to the maximum
of 450 volts shows the power of the situation to
influence behaviour. However, the fact that 35%
of participants were somehow able to resist the
pressure of the situation and walk away before
administering the maximum shock of 450 volts
provides evidence that people’s personalities can be
an even greater influence on their behaviour than the
situational pressures around them.
To try and find out which features of the situation
had the greatest impact on the behaviour of
Part 2: Section 1 Core Studies
■
12
the participants, Milgram carried out a series
of variations on his original procedure, altering
one aspect of the procedure at a time, such as
conducting it at an office building in Bridgeport
rather than at Yale University (47.5% of participants
went up to 450 volts), having the victim in the same
room as the teacher (40% went up to 450 volts),
and having two experimenters give contradictory
commands about whether the teacher should stop
giving electric shocks or go on (0% went up to 450
volts). These helped to isolate which features of the
situation were having the greatest impact on leading
to the obedient behaviour.
To try and find out whether there were any
individual factors that those who were obedient
or disobedient had in common, Milgram collected
background information on participants. In his book
Obedience to Authority (p. 207), he reports the
following:
‘Republicans and Democrats were not significantly
different in obedience levels; Catholics were more
obedient than Jews or Protestants. The better
educated were more defiant than the less welleducated. Those in the moral professions of law,
medicine, and teaching showed greater defiance
than those in the more technical professions, such
as engineering and physical science. The longer
one’s military service, the more obedience – except
that former officers were less obedient than those
who served as enlisted men, regardless of length of
service.’
However, as Milgram makes clear in the same book
(p. 208), none of these findings were conclusive:
‘My overall reaction was to wonder at how few
correlates there were of obedience and disobedience
and how weakly they are related to the observed
behaviour. I am certain that there is a complex
personality basis to obedience and disobedience. But
I know we have not found it.’
■
F ree will/determinism debate – In many ways,
the points made above in the debate about whether
behaviour is best explained in terms of factors to do
with the situation or factors to do with the individual
can be applied to the free will/determinism debate.
Thus, the 65% of participants who administered
electric shocks to the learner all the way up to
the maximum 450 volts can be seen as having
their behaviour determined by the situation they
were in. Against this, the 35% of participants who
Links to areas/perspectives
ilgram’s study falls within the social area because
M
it reveals the extent to which people’s behaviour
can be influenced by other people around them: his
participants did not want to administer high voltage
electric shocks to the ‘learner’ but, in the face of the
prods from the ‘experimenter’, they went against
their desires and behaved in the way that was
requested of them.
■ However, apart from the social area, Milgram’s study
could arguably also be placed within the individual
differences area because of his growing recognition
that the same situation would not affect everyone
in the same way and that the explanation of why
some people would be obedient while others might
be disobedient requires an understanding of factors
to do with each of them as an individual (e.g. their
political or religious beliefs, their level or type of
education, or their level of military experience).
However, this was not something that he was able to
draw any conclusions about.
■
Links to the Key Theme
■
In relation to the Key Theme of ‘responses to
people in authority’, Milgram’s study would appear
to tell us that obedience to those in authority – even
■
when they are asking us to cause harm to someone
else – is much more common than we would like to
believe.
However, there are many questions that arise from
Milgram’s study, such as:
●Would people in other countries show the same
levels of obedience to authority figures as Milgram
saw amongst his participants in the USA?
●Would people now still be as obedient to authority
figures as they were back in the early 1960s?
●Is there anything (e.g. in terms of personality) that
sets people who are disobedient apart from people
who are obedient?
●Does it make a difference that the person
Milgram’s participants were being told to harm
was someone they didn’t know? Would they have
behaved differently if the person being harmed was
a friend of theirs?
●Would people be more or less obedient if the
scenario they were presented with involved just
one request being made of them (as opposed to a
series of up to 30 requests)?
●Would people behave differently if disobedience
didn’t involve having to confront an authority
figure directly?
●Would people be more likely to disobey if the idea
that the research might not be ethically acceptable
was raised during the course of the study?
●Would people be more likely to disobey if they
were given time for reflection during the study (i.e.
a sort of ‘cooling off’ period)?
Chapter 1 Social Psychology
walked away from the experiment before reaching
the maximum shock of 450 volts can be seen as
exercising free will and choosing how they act.
■ Usefulness of research – Milgram’s study, and
the variations upon the original experiment, can be
seen as extremely useful. For instance, it suggests
to people in positions of authority that people
in positions subordinate to them can generally
be expected to be obedient. On top of this, the
variations on Milgram’s original experiment suggest
that levels of obedience might be enhanced by
keeping anyone who might be harmed by the
person’s obedient actions invisible to them and also
by not having anyone else there giving contradictory
orders. However, whilst Milgram’s study could be put
to positive use by responsible authority figures (e.g.
in school, business or military settings), it also has
the potential to be abused by those who might seek
to get people to obey them for malicious purposes. A
further use of the study, therefore, is for all of us to
guard against blind obedience and to make our own
minds up about whether the orders we are being
given are ones we feel comfortable obeying.
It is because of questions like this that research into
obedience did not end with Milgram and, indeed,
research in this area still continues today, as we will
see when we turn to a more contemporary study by
Bocchiaro, Zimbardo and Van Lange from 2012.
Find out more
●Use
the internet to locate video footage of
Milgram’s obedience experiment.
●Find out more about the variations Milgram
carried out on his original experiment (NB These
are described in detail in his book Obedience to
Authority).
●Find out about the replications that were carried
out of Milgram’s study in other countries by other
researchers (e.g. in Spain, the UK, Germany, and
Australia).
13
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Part 2: Section 1 Core Studies
A Denotes content that is for A Level only
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